Designing the Requirements: Building Applications that the User Wants and Needs

Chapter 2. A Hierarchy of Designs

As I pointed out in Chapter 1, “Introduction to Context-Driven Design,” engineered design depends on having a hierarchy of designs. In this chapter I examine whether we can construct an engineering-quality hierarchy of designs for IT software development and whether it is worth our while to do so.

This chapter has three parts. In the first section, “Justifying the Hierarchy of Designs,” I examine the design hierarchy from the bottom up with the aim of justifying the hierarchy of designs. In the following sections—“Context Design,” “Integration Design,” “Technical Design,” “User Interface Design,” “Database Design,” and “Implementation”—I look at the hierarchy of designs from the top down to give a feel for the ...